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The first case of periorbital human dirofilariasis in the Czech Republic

Parasitology Research volume 120, pages 739–742 (2021)Cite this article

Abstract

Dirofilaria repens and Dirofilaria immitis are the most common filarial species affecting humans in Europe. Dirofilaria repens causes subcutaneous or ocular infection, whereas D. immitis is responsible mainly for the pulmonary form. In this report, we present the first human case of periorbital dirofilariasis in the Czech Republic. A 58-year-old woman suffered from an eyelid oedema, redness and pain in the left eye. After excising the parasite from her eyelid, all clinical symptoms disappeared. Based on the morphology and cytochrome oxidase I sequencing, the parasite was identified as D. repens. Histology revealed that the excised worm was female with absent microfilariae in uteri. With respect to the length of the incubation period and the sequence identity with a known Czech isolate, we concluded that D. repens was most likely of autochthonous origin.

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Data availability

Corresponding photos of the worm are included in MS (Fig. 1). Representative nucleic acid sequence was submitted to GenBank® (NCBI) under the accession number MW017212.

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Funding

The study was supported by the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports of the Czech Republic under the project FIT (Pharmacology, Immunotherapy, nanoToxicology) CZ.02.1.01/0.0/0.0/15_003/0000495 and by the Ministry of Agriculture of the Czech Republic, institutional support MZE-RO0518.

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Affiliations

  1. Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology, Veterinary Research Institute, Hudcova 296/70, 621 00, Brno, Czech Republic

    Jan Gebauer, Jaroslav Ondruš, Pavel Kulich & Adam Novobilský

  2. Novopath s.r.o., Vrchlického 230, 533 45, Čeperka, Czech Republic

    Ladislav Novotný

  3. Finn Pathologists, CVS Group, One Eyed Lane, Weybread, Norfolk, UK

    Ladislav Novotný

  4. Department of General Biology and Parasitology, Medical University of Warsaw, 02-004, Warsaw, Poland

    Rusłan Sałamatin

  5. Department of Infectious Diseases, University Hospital Brno, Jihlavská 340/20, Brno, Czech Republic

    Petr Husa

  6. Faculty of Medicine, Masaryk University, Kamenice 735/5, Brno, Czech Republic

    Petr Husa

Authors
  1. Jan Gebauer
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  2. Jaroslav Ondruš
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  3. Pavel Kulich
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  4. Ladislav Novotný
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  5. Rusłan Sałamatin
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  6. Petr Husa
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  7. Adam Novobilský
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Contributions

JG, JO, PK, LN, and AN performed laboratory investigation. PH carried out clinical observation of the patient. AN, JO, and RS analysed and interpreted the data. AN and JG wrote the draft of the manuscript. All authors critically revised the manuscript for intellectual content, read, and approved the final manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Adam Novobilský.

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The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest.

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All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. Informed consent was obtained from the patient in the study.

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Gebauer, J., Ondruš, J., Kulich, P. et al. The first case of periorbital human dirofilariasis in the Czech Republic. Parasitol Res 120, 739–742 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00436-020-07003-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00436-020-07003-9

Keywords

  • Clinical symptom
  • Cytochrome oxidase I
  • Dirofilaria repens
  • Eye
  • Filarial
  • Human
  • Microfilaria
  • Ocular infection